I sent my ruined jeans into a service that claims to fix the holes in the thighs — and the before and afters are ... - INSIDER

Me in my favorite pair of jeans. Megan Willet/INSIDER

The INSIDER Summary:

• My favorite pair of jeans had holes in the thighs from repeated wears.
• I didn't want to give up on my jeans, so I sent them into a service that claimed to fix them.
• There are a few places that do this, but the one I tried is Denim Therapy.
• My jeans were returned good as new.
• See the before and after pictures below.

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A good pair of jeans is hard to find. But as a woman with thighs that touch, my favorite pairs of jeans usually have a shelf-life of around a year before I inevitably find the material in the legs starts to wear down.

And that timeline is shortened when I find a pair of jeans that I really love and I wear them all the time. Recently when I realized my favorite pair of Madewell jeans were falling apart, I freaked out.

My poor jeans. Megan Willet/INSIDER

I tried to find them in stores and on resale sites like Poshmark, but to no avail. These jeans were the perfect color, rise, and fabric, and I was devastated that I would now be on the hunt to find a different and likely more expensive pair to take their place.

That's when in a fit of exasperation, I searched for "jean hole fix" on Google and up popped up a company called Denim Therapy.

Denim Therapy is far from the only brand that offers these services. Denim Surgeon and Denim Doctor in the UK all aim to do the same thing, in addition to some local tailor shops. Still, after perusing the reviews on Yelp and looking at before and after pictures online, I was swayed into giving Denim Therapy a shot.

Because I'm based in New York, I was able to take my jeans directly to the company instead of filling out an online form. The office was filled with people at sewing machines stitching away and there was a huge wall of jeans on one end of the room that were either waiting to be fixed or about to be sent out.

A pleasant man at the front desk helped me with my order. After looking at my jeans, he told me I would need about two inches of reinforcement. I ended up asking for an extra inch or so since I wanted my jeans to be not only reinforced at the problem area but around the hole itself. My total estimate came out to $45.

It took around a month before my jeans were ready to pick up, but they were well worth the wait. Here's a before and after of my jeans.

Excuse the different lighting — these are the same jeans. Megan Willett/INSIDER

And here's what they look like on the inside.

This is the netting that helped reinforce my jeans. Megan Willet/INSIDER

At first, I was worried about the patches on my new jeans. The interior netting didn't look very strong and I wondered if I could successfully wash my jeans without anything weird happening to them.

To my surprise, after around two month's worth of wears, my jeans are back to normal. I've washed them four times since getting them back — once carefully and the other three times not so carefully — and can say with conviction that they hold up as well as when I first bought them. Though the material truthfully feels a little stiffer in the reinforced region than in the rest of my pant leg, they don't look abnormal on the exterior and aren't uncomfortable at all.

You can't even tell I had my jeans fixed. Megan Willet/INSIDER

To be fair, $45 is pretty steep to fix a pair of jeans unless you're truly committed to your denim. I would definitely recommend Denim Therapy and hole patching services like these, but only if your jeans were originally extremely expensive or you desperately need your favorite jeans to last longer, like me.

I'm resigned to the fact that these jeans may not last forever, but hey — at least I bought myself another year or so.

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